LOOKIN' TO GET OUT

year: 1982

cast: Jon Voight, Burt Young, Ann Margaret, Angelina Jolie

director: Hal Ashby

rating: **1/2

The first fifty minutes with Jon Voight and Burt Young as two unlucky gamblers talking about life and losing (one in the same for these guys) is very entertaining. They go from L.A. to Las Vegas, get set up in a Vegas Suite, and the freestyle fun continues as the fish out of water live it up. Then the bottom falls out when the film becomes a stupid "chase" film as our two lovable losers spend the last half of the film running away from the two fat silly thugs they shook in L.A. with a really bad electronic score in the background. Should have remained a character-study, and dropped the pointless action, which wasn't suspensful anyhow. Mostly known for a cameo by Voight's real-life daughter Angelina Jolie as his fictional one.

BOUND FOR GLORY

year: 1976

cast: David Carradine

director: Hal Ashby

rating: ***1/2

I love the late David Carradine as an actor but in many films he seems to be sort of... not trying very hard. Well this might be because he often played characters who were cool enough to NOT HAVE TO try very hard but rather to be themselves: cool dudes who can kick ass if need be. But here he's really acting and at the same time is completely natural and doesn't seem to be trying at all: but with excellent results. And that's him singing and playing the guitar, as you need to be a REAL musician to portray folk music icon Woodie Guthrie: the man who did to music what John Dillinger did to the depression. Hal Ashby in his Robert Altmaneque style of letting nature take its course allows everything to fall into place JUST RIGHT, and the film - although centering on a very political man - never gets too preachy. If it were made today, I doubt political-subtlety would prevail.

SHAMPOO

year: 1975

cast: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Jack Warden

rating: ***1/2

Warren Beatty plays a womanizing hairdresser who goes from woman to woman, to woman to woman to woman, to woman. Basically, Warren is playing himself but as a hairdresser. Hal Ashby lets things happen on their own accord in his usual Altmanesque manner, and great classic rock tunes play without reason or purpose, in the usual Ashbyesque manner. Beatty has some nice scenes with scene-stealer (and the most interesting character) Jack Warden as a millionaire Beatty needs for a loan, only he's screwing his girlfriend... And to really feel the complete overall effect you MUST wait for the very, very end. The FINAL shot sums up a life of the gigalo, a character standing ALL ALONE. It's a remarkable closing image and makes you look back on the rest of the film with more depth and clarity.